Stargate (1994)
It will take you a million light years from home. But will it bring you back?
With all the stars in space, one could really wonder what’s out there when there’s so much possibility in even our small little community of constellations. Travel through space has been a bit of a restrictive element though - between travel speeds, building costs, and just general human knowledge - so you can’t help but have imaginations run wild with what-ifs and how-abouts. What if teleportation was a thing? What if you could hop on some galactic light-way that would zip you about faster than light? What if you could just transfer your mind from one shell to another? If such technology did exist, who would make or how did they do it? Well, in tonight’s example, we delve a bit into some ancient aliens - tonight, we slip through the Stargate.
Back on an archeological dig, a giant ring has been discovered. Years later, research has finally caught up to what it is, and a linguist is brought on board to help decipher the final steps. He does so incredibly, pretty much lucking into it over night really. Thus beings the government plan of exploring whatever planet is on the other side. Our main story follows the squad getting sent over, and what they find on the other side: an alien god, a race of slaves, and a whole lot of secrets. One story not enough? How about a side story about a man coping with his kid’s death? How about the seeds of rebellion? How about an alien survivor trying to live forever? Don’t be fooled - they aren’t all super fleshed out or anything, but they are technically still there to some degree regardless.
Actors do a good job here. I’ll admit, I’m partially biased towards Kurt Russell - he’s one of the few actors where I’ll watch a movie I have no interest in just because he’s in it, and I know at least he won’t let me down performance-wise. He’s not the only actor in it though, and everybody here does a really good job with their roles, including the kids who you’ll be reading more than really listening too. Well, at least if your a single-language pleb like me anyways. That said, they all do quite a good job with their physical performances, selling whatever excitement or worry they might have without necessarily needing understandable verbal lines. There some pretty basic chemistry between different pairs of characters as well, but it’s enough that you don’t feel totally pulled out of the movie at all when your watching it.
As somewhat implied, a lot of the ancient Egyptian dialect getting thrown around is subtitled. Amusingly, you can actually watch the vast majority of the movie without ever reading a subtitle and still be able to figure out what’s going on. It really isn’t until you hit the end of the movie that they start having a lot of conversations amongst themselves without the earth-force being involved that it becomes quite beneficial to have those subtitles. Audio balance is alright, although I had to do some tweaking on my end to boost the volume a bit, since for some reason Netflix was being awfully quiet. After I managed to get it boosted up a bit it was all good though, and I could hear everything that was intended for me to hear.
Boldly go where no known man has gone before.
Given it’s a science fiction movie, you’ve probably already figured there would be quite a bit of special effects in there, and you’d be right. I think the weakest effect in the movie is the actual traveling segment of using the stargate, but everything else is really quite nice to look at even now. Sure, head transformations aren’t as good as the actual Anubis head or anything, and you could argue the few electrical moments aren’t the best - but the electric parts kind of look par for the course, not bad, and the transforming parts are such a small portion of the effects that it didn’t really bother me all that much. In all honesty, I’d rather the head just stay as the Horus/Anubis head anyways, as they have to be some of the coolest darn props in a movie that I’ve seen - and maybe it’s just a bit of nostalgia talking, but if I found one of those things for a reasonable price I’d have to start buying one of those collector shelves. Explosions and the likes all look quite good as well, so you shouldn’t find yourself too disappointed there.
Costume work is also good. Weapons, military gear, the resident’s garb, and the dozen or so outfits for the main bad themself all look both suitable and interesting. The setting looks suitably desert, being very familiar and slightly foreign all at once. Of course, when we start hitting the advanced tech it all looks fancy without being super digital-looking, instead integrating itself all into a regal look of Egyptian royalty fitting with the premise of being the god Ra. Even the advanced weapons are disguised as mere ornate staffs until they start blasting out lasers. The most foreign element is probably the yak-like creature, which although isn’t the most convincing creature head it’s still passable for what it is.
The music here is incredibly familiar to me. It’s been a while since I’ve watched Stargate, so I don’t really feel like it’s a memory-familiar and probably more just a similarity to most adventure movie soundtracks, but either way it’s a nice soundtrack that fills you with a sense of adventure and ancient desert cultures. There’s a few moments where it will convey a sense of dread instead, but in most cases it’s always that epic adventure sound to it. Sounds all are fitting of what they are - be it a staff-blast, spaceship, bomb, explosion, or gunshot. All of the elements do a good job of playing together, and it’s a pretty enjoyable watch. That said though, the characters don’t always really feel like they are that important - at least in regards to the story - and I think that might just be intentional as well. They try to give you just enough of a character to make you maybe care about them at least being in the movie, but they also don’t feel like they go too overboard - particularly with most of the army guys.
Man, it just looks so good!
I mean, everyone should check out Stargate if they haven’t already. Is it the best movie ever? Well, no, but it’s fun and imaginative and has some really great props. Heck, there must have been something behind it, as it ended up getting multiple TV shows and a few other movies as well. It’s not overly philosophical and over reaching, but it provides plenty of little elements for people to want more of or think more about if they choose to.